The Office of the President of Ukraine hopes that the Ukrainian parliament will consider a bill on demonopolization of the spirit sector in Ukraine next week and that the preparations of state-owned enterprise Ukrspyrt will start, Deputy Head of the Office of the President Yulia Kovaliv has said.
“According to our estimates, the privatization of Ukrspyrt will bring us at least UAH 5 billion,” she said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday.
Kovaliv recalled that last week, the president introduced a bill on the demonopolization of alcohol production in the country to the Verkhovna Rada.
“Now alcohol is produced by the state-owned enterprise Ukrspyrt, while in another law we stipulate that all licenses for the production of alcohol can be granted only to state-owned enterprises. Actually, in conditions of non-liberalized production of alcohol in Ukraine, Ukrspyrt can only be sold at the price of scrap metal. We hope that next week this law on the demonopolization of the alcohol industry will be adopted and, together with this, preparations will be made for the privatization of Ukrspyrt,” Kovaliv said.
State-owned enterprise Ukrspyrt is a major producer of alcohol and alcohol-containing products in Ukraine. Until now, it was under the control of the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food.
The total production capacity of the SOE is more than 36 million decaliters per year.
Its work is provided by 41 production sites.
A bill on demonopolilzation of the spirit sector could be passed by the end of this year, according to newly appointed advisor to the Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine on a voluntary basis Serhiy Bleskun. “A project to demonopolize the alcohol industry starts on Friday during the roundtable. A law on demonopolization of the alcohol industry may be adopted by the end of the year. The bill has already been developed,” he said at a briefing in the Cabinet of Ministers on Wednesday.
According to Bleskun, the state receives UAH 4.6 billion annually from the alcohol industry.
“We ask buyers of alcohol how much time it will take to build a distillery. They say: one and a half or two years. If they are allowed today, then after one and a half or two years they will have their own alcohol to make private distilleries operate,” he said.
State-owned enterprise Ukrspyrt is a major producer of alcohol and alcohol-containing products in Ukraine. Until now, it was subordinate to the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food.
The total production capacity of the SOE is more than 36 million decalitres per year. It has 41 production sites.
State property worth UAH 1 billion was sold through the ProZorro electronic trading system in the framework of small-scale privatization in Ukraine, according to the ProZorro page on Facebook. According to the report, since the launch of small privatization, 813 successful auctions have been held through the electronic system, which brought the State Property Fund of Ukraine more than UAH 476 million, and municipalities some UAH 562 million.
“The objects of small privatization are in a high demand – an average of 2.7 participants compete for each lot. And the average increase in the starting sale price is 61.24%,” the report says.
“We beat a good figure in small privatization – UAH 1 billion for taxpayers in Ukraine. The practical result of the work of ProZorro.Sale. If after Maidan we did just that, I would have already considered that it was not for nothing that I came to work in government agencies,” First Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister of Ukraine Maksym Nefyodov said on Facebook.
The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) has announced repeated tenders to select advisors for preparing the following companies for privatization: 99.9988% stake in OJSC Oriana, 99.9952% in PJSC Sumykhimprom and 100% in National Joint Stock Company Ukragroleasing. “To privatize companies for which there no tender was held, and only one bid was submitted, we announced a new tender to select advisors. Next month there will be a repeated tender,” Head of the SPF Vitaliy Trubarov told journalists in Odesa on the sidelines of the Ukrainian Financial Forum organized by the ICU investment group.
According to their terms, bids for participation in the tenders are accepted until the end of the day on October 17. The first stages of the tenders are scheduled for October 23, and the second – for October 26.
“Unfortunately, during the summer period many investment advisers could not be prepared for unbiased reasons,” Trubarov said, expressing hope that the repeated tenders will be success.
He also recalled that for the selection of an adviser for the privatization of Azovmash, the State Property Fund did not receive a single bid, and now, according to the requirements of the new law on privatization, the fund will prepare it for sale without involving an adviser.
As a result of the next wave of privatization, investors who are ready to invest in their development of Ukrainian companies should become their new owners, EBRD Managing Director for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus Francis Malige is convinced.
Our task is to organize privatization in such a way that a real investor who will invest money will come, we need to prepare this process, he told Interfax-Ukraine.
On the one hand, it is unacceptable that sometimes this process takes so much time, but on the other hand – I would not want to see that the new owners of the companies have nothing to do with them, investors should be real, Malige noted.
As reported, in early 2018 the working group on privatization was updated. It included representatives of the Reforms Delivery Office under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, SAGSUR, the World Bank, the EBRD, the International Monetary Fund, the USAID, and the EU Delegation to Ukraine.
The working group was renewed to effectively coordinate the authorities, prepare recommendations and proposals for the draft resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers on privatization and conditions of the sale of public property, attract international financial and technical assistance to prepare for privatization and put up the objects for sale and analyze the main problems of ensuring transparent and competitive privatization.
EBRD, FINANCE DEVELOPMENT, INVESTORS, OWNERS, PRIVATIZATION, UKRAINIAN ENTERPRISES
First Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Maksym Nefyodov and representatives of the leadership of Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) on August 14 met in Kyiv to discuss the possible participation of the Kuwaiti side in the privatization of Ukrainian state-owned enterprises, the ministry has said. “The KIA leadership noted the Kuwaiti side is interested in investing own funds in Ukrainian projects and the assets of investment funds in the initial placement of shares of Ukrainian companies on the world exchanges, real estate, financial market, services,” it said.
In particular, the first investment director of KIA and the deputy head of the mission, who attended the meeting, drew attention of the ministry representatives to the readiness to invest through the purchase of profitable enterprises, as well as trade and office centers, the report said.
